Paper Tiger Books was a British

publishing house Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...

which focused primarily on books of

modern art Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the styles and philosophies of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the tradit ...

, specifically the visionary, the fantastic, and

science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

, and an imprint of Dragons World Ltd. It was started in 1976 by Hubert Schaafsma and brothers Martyn and Roger Dean after the success of Roger Dean's book ''Views'' through a sister imprint, Dragon's Dream. Artists published by Paper Tiger include

Chris Achilleos Chris is a short form of various names including Christopher, Christian, Christina, and Christine. Chris is also used as a name in its own right, however it is not as common. People with the given name * Chris Abani (born 1966), Nigerian autho ...

, Stephen Bradbury,

Bob Eggleton Bob Eggleton (born September 13, 1960) is an American science fiction, fantasy and horror fiction, horror artist. Eggleton is a nine-time Hugo Award–winner for Best Pro Artist in science fiction and fantasy, first winning in 1994. He won the Hu ...

, John Harris,

Peter Andrew Jones Peter Andrew Jones (born 14 December 1951) is a British artist and illustrator who has produced a large number of fantasy and science fiction genre illustrations. During a professional career of over 43 years he has worked on book jacket covers, ...

Josh Kirby Ronald William "Josh" Kirby (27 November 1928 – 23 October 2001) was a British commercial artist. Over a career spanning 60 years, he was the artist for the covers of many science fiction books including Terry Pratchett's ''Discworld'' novel ...

Rodney Matthews Rodney Matthews (born 6 July 1945) is a British illustrator and conceptual designer of fantasy and science-fiction. Career Trained at the West of England College of Art, Matthews worked in advertising for Plastic Dog Graphics before turning ...

, Chris Moore,

Bruce Pennington Bruce Pennington (born 10 May 1944)''Eschatus'', Paper Tiger Books, 1976, Simon & Schuster, is a British painter, best known for his science fiction and fantasy novel cover art. Pennington's works have largely featured on the covers of novels o ...

Barclay Shaw Barclay Shaw (born October 12, 1949) is an American professional artist best known for his fantasy and science fiction artwork. He has been nominated five times for the Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist and has earned a top ten ranking six ...

, Anne Sudworth, Jim Warren, David A. Hardy, and

Patrick Woodroffe Patrick James Woodroffe (27 October 1940 – 10 May 2014) was an England, English artist, etcher and drawer, who specialised in Fantasy art, fantasy science-fiction artwork, with images that bordered on the surreal. His achievements include s ...

; as well as numerous titles by

Boris Vallejo Boris Vallejo (born January 8, 1941) is a Peruvian-American painter who works in the science fiction, fantasy, and erotica genres. His hyper-representational paintings have appeared on the covers of numerous novels in the science fiction, sword ...

and

Julie Bell Julie Bell (born October 21, 1958) is an American fine artist, illustrator, photographer, bodybuilder and wildlife painter. Bell is also a fantasy artist and a representative of the heroic fantasy and fantastic realism genres. Bell has won Che ...

History

Initially formed to publish ''The Album Cover Album'', Paper Tiger's range quickly expanded to include art which was not only connected to music, but also the visionary, the fantastic, and the best of

. The staff within the company, apart from Hubert Schaafsma, Martyn and Roger Dean, included Dominy Hamilton (daughter of Richard Hamilton), Jim Slattery, Christine Miles, Shelley Alge, and Steve Henderson. Through its imprint Dragon's World, the company published the 1978 book ''The Round Art: The Astrology of Time and Space'', by the astrologer and artist A. T. Mann. Hubert Schaafsma bought out the Dean brothers in 1981, who left the company, and it continued under the management of Schaafsma, producing a series of

fantasy art Fantastic art is a broad and loosely defined art genre. It is not restricted to a specific school of artists, geographical location or historical period. It can be characterised by subject matter—which portrays non-realistic, mystical, mythi ...

books, many of which were edited by Nigel Suckling, who also provided text to accompany the pictures. Under Schaafsma's leadership, the Dragon's World company expanded into the imprints of Dragon's World Children's Books, Dragon's World Natural History Books, and Dragon's World Books—the latter being general visual interest books. The Paper Tiger imprint dealing with fantasy/visionary/science fiction and music was expanded to publish over 250 titles in 12 languages throughout the world. From July 1999 through October 2001, Paper Tiger issued a monthly

ezine An online magazine is a magazine published on the Internet, through bulletin board systems and other forms of public computer networks. One of the first magazines to convert from a print magazine format to an online only magazine was the computer ...

called ''The Paper Snarl'', which featured interviews with its artists. In 1997, Paper Tiger was "rescued" by

Collins & Brown HarperCollins Publishers LLC is a British–American publishing company that is considered to be one of the " Big Five" English-language publishers, along with Penguin Random House, Hachette, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster. HarperCollins is h ...

, before becoming an imprint of

Anova Books HarperCollins Publishers LLC is a British–American publishing company that is considered to be one of the " Big Five" English-language publishers, along with Penguin Random House, Hachette, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster. HarperCollins is ...

. As of late 2009, the imprint appears to be defunct.

References

External links

Paper Tiger
at the

Internet Speculative Fiction Database The Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB) is a database of bibliographic information on genres considered speculative fiction, including science fiction and related genres such as fantasy, alternate history, and horror fiction. The ISFDB ...

{{Authority control Book publishing companies of the United Kingdom Publishing companies established in 1976 1976 establishments in the United Kingdom